The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus for forming a color image.
A thermal transfer color copying machine has been recently developed as an image forming apparatus of this type. In this copying machine, a document is scanned by an optical scanner to read an image signal of the document. Then, the image signal is separated into color component signals, and the color component signals are stored in a memory. The color component signals are read for each color component, and are supplied to a thermal head. Using an ink ribbon, respective color component images are transferred to a paper sheet to overlap each other, thereby obtaining a full color copy.
However, in this machine, as compared to a conventional monochrome electrophotographic copying machine, the copying time is prolonged by the number of times corresponding to the number of color components. For this reason, during the copying operation, an operator must wait without knowing how the copying process is proceeding and when it will be completed.